1. United States
2. Pa.
3. Letter

I am writing to strongly oppose the proposed BUILD America 250 legislation and the excessive annual fees it would impose on electric vehicle owners. While I agree that all drivers should contribute fairly to maintaining our roads and infrastructure, this bill does not create a fair or evidence-based system. Instead, it disproportionately targets EV owners with flat annual fees that significantly exceed what the average gasoline vehicle driver pays in federal gas taxes. According to multiple analyses, the average gas-powered vehicle contributes roughly $88–$100 per year in federal fuel taxes, yet this proposal would charge EV owners $130 annually immediately, with automatic increases over time. Other proposals tied to this effort have gone as high as $200–$250 annually; two to three times what most gas vehicle drivers contribute. Flat fees are especially unfair because they are unrelated to actual road usage. A retiree driving an EV 3,000 miles per year would pay the same amount as someone driving 25,000 miles annually. Gas taxes, while imperfect, at least scale with miles driven and fuel consumed. If Congress truly wants a fair long-term funding model, a mileage-based system applied equally across all vehicle types would make far more sense than singling out EVs. This legislation also ignores the broader public benefits EV adoption provides. Electric vehicles reduce air pollution, lower healthcare costs, strengthen energy independence, and help insulate consumers from volatile gasoline prices. At a time when the United States is already falling behind other countries in EV adoption, policies like this discourage innovation and make cleaner transportation unnecessarily more expensive. Congress has not raised the federal gas tax since 1993. The resulting transportation funding shortfall is primarily due to decades of political unwillingness to modernize infrastructure funding, not because EV owners are avoiding their responsibilities. Punishing a relatively small percentage of drivers for that failure is neither equitable nor forward-looking. I urge you to oppose the BUILD America 250 bill and instead pursue transportation funding solutions that are fair, technology-neutral, and based on actual road usage rather than punitive flat fees targeted at EV owners. Thank you for your time and consideration.